VCU set to introduce new hoops coach
Virginia Commonwealth didn’t wait long to find its next head basketball coach. Former Florida assistant Shaka Smith will be introduced at the Siegel Center in Richmond on Thursday as the new head man. Smart, 32, replaces Anthony Grant, himself a former Florida assistant, who left VCU last week to take the head job at Alabama. Read more
Moran, Wagner take leads in pre-primary polls
Brian Moran has moved into the lead in the governor’s race, and Jody Wagner seems to be running away in the battle for the Democratic Party lieutenant-governor nomination, in a new Public Policy Polling survey out Tuesday.
Moran had been trailing Terry McAuliffe by a 21 percent-to-19 percent margin in the February PPP poll, but now leads 22 percent to 18 percent, with Bath County State Sen. Creigh Deeds gaining a point from last month to go from 14 percent to 15 percent. Read more
Greg Marrow | Transportation fix
Recently there has been much discussion, which is gathering momentum, to privatize the 41 rest areas along the 325 miles of I-81 in an effort to save the Virginia Department of Transportation about $12 million. While this may sound appealing in the short term, it will do little, if anything, to solve the much larger problem of the failure to fund VDOT overall. Read more
UVa. confirms Bennett hire
It’s official – Tony Bennett is the new men’s basketball coach at the University of Virginia.
“Tony Bennett comes to the University of Virginia with a plan to build our program,” said UVa. athletics director Craig Littlepage, whose own future at the University seems to hang in the balance with the much-discussed hire, at $1.7 million a year for five years with a $500,000 signing bonus and an additional bonus of $500,000 if he completes the five-year life of the contract. Read more
No children left behind?
The good news – area graduation rates are right at or just above the state average. The bad news – we’re still only graduating around four in five ninth-graders in four years, and close to one in 12 are dropping out altogether.
That is the revelation from Tuesday’s release of the Virginia School Report Card tracking the on-time graduation rate for ninth-graders in Virginia public schools in the 2004-2005 school year. Read more
Mad Hatter’s Easter Parade
The Wayne Theatre Alliance and the Waynesboro YMCA will welcome spring to the Valley with a fun-packed three hours for children of all ages on Saturday, April 11. The White Rabbit and the Mad Hatter will open the gates to the Mad Hatter’s Easter Parade in Waynesboro’s Constitution Park at 11 am. For the next three hours, the park will be the place for live entertainment, pony rides, crafts, a parade and an Easter egg hunt. Free balloons will be provided by Kids & Sew On. Read more
Kaine announces actions on Renew Virginia
Gov. Tim Kaine announced action on Tuesday on several pieces of legislation related to his Renew Virginia green initiative, including a series of amendments to bills included in the package.
- SB 1248 – Northam
This bill originally implemented the number one recommendation of the Climate Change Commission: the establishment of a mandatory energy efficiency standard under which electricity consumption would be reduced by 19 percent of 2006 levels by 2025. Read more
